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Timeline: Humans in space

Much of the history of manned space travel was a story of two superpowers battling it out for the big prizes, while the Europeans made up the numbers. Lately, things have been changing: while the US still dominates, China and Europe have been making increasingly confident strides away from the surface of the Earth. We trace the history of space travel, from the early days of animals on rockets to the planned International Space Centre.

1947: Fruit flies become the first creatures in space, getting a ride on a UK-launched V2 rocket.

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1949: Albert II, a rhesus monkey, is sent into space on a US-launched V2 rocket. He died on impact after a parachute failure.

1951: On September 20, a monkey named Yorick and 11 mice are recovered after an Aerobee missile flight of 72,000 metres at Holloman Air Force Base, New Mexico. Yorick got a fair amount of press as the first monkey to live through a space flight.

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1955: The UK starts developing its Blue Streak intermediate range ballistic missile. It was later cancelled as a weapons system but then incorporated within the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) as the first stage of the Europa satellite launch vehicle.

1957: Sputnik 1 orbit the Earth.

1957: Laika became the first dog to be launched into orbit aboard Sputnik 2 spacecraft. Laika died during the flight.

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1958: Pierre Auger from France and Edoardo Amaldi from Italy, two prominent members of the European scientific community, recommend that European governments set up a ‘purely scientific’ joint organisation for space research, taking CERN as a model.

1958: A Jupiter rocket is launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, with a South American squirrel monkey named Gordo onboard. The nosecone recovery parachute failed to operate and Gordo died. Telemetry data sent back during the flight showed that the monkey survived 10G at launch, eight minutes of weightlessness and 40G at re-entry speeds of 10,000 miles per hour.

1959: On board another Jupiter rocket, Able and Baker become the first monkeys to survive spaceflight. Able dies four days after the flight from a reaction to anesthesia while undergoing surgery to remove an infected medical electrode, while Baker lived until 1984. Later that year, the duo was followed by a rhesus monkey called Sam, who also survived his journey.

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1959: First glimpse of the far side of the moon thanks to the Soviet satellite Lunik III.

1960: British radio telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire makes contact with the American Pioneer V satellite at a distance of 407,000 miles, setting a new record.

1960: On August 19, Sputnik takes off with Belka and Strelka, two dogs, and becomes the first spacecraft to carry mammals into orbit and return them alive. One of Strelka's pups, Pushinka, bred and born after her mission, was given as a present to Caroline Kennedy by Nikita Khruschev in 1961.

1961: In January, Ham the Chimp was launched in the US Mercury capsule aboard a Redstone rocket. He travels 155 miles in 16.5 minutes. At the end of that year, Enos the chimp became the first primate in orbit, circling the earth twice.

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1961: In April, Yuri Gagarin orbits the Earth for nearly two hours making the Soviet Union the first nation to put a man into space. A month later, Alan Shepard became the first American in space with a sub-orbital flight lasting 15 minutes.

1961: In May, John F Kennedy announced: "I believe that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth."

1961: A Russian, Major Gherman Titov, becomes the first astronaut to spend a day in space, returning to Earth safely after 25 hours in space.

1962: John Glenn becomes the first American astronaut to orbit Earth. In 1998, Glenn became the oldest man in space at the age of 77.

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1964: European countries form two agencies, one to develop a launch system, the European Launch Development Organisation (ELDO) and the other, the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO), to develop spacecraft.

1965: The Gemini V returns to Earth safely, bringing US atronauts Charles Conrad and Gordon Cooper home. The pair had spent eight days orbiting the earth &ndash; three days longer than previous missions.

1966: The US had managed to crash probes into the Moon, but in February the Russians successfully landed the Luna 9 probe, which then immediately started taking images of its surroundings. The Americans followed in June with the Surveyor 1.

1966: Three US astronauts die in the Apollo 1 disaster in a test run for the launch.

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1967: Russian Colonel Vladimir Komarov, becomes the first cosmonaut to die in a space crash when the strings of his craft’s parachute became tangled.

1967: The European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) is set up in Darmstadt, Germany. It has now operated more than 50 satellites in 40 years of history.

1967: In October, the Russian Venera 4 probe penetrates the atmosphere of Venus and then disappears. Days later, the US Mariner 5 successfully flew past the planet and managed to record data revealing the planet to be what Nasa scientists called "a hell-hole".

1968: On Christmas Eve, the crew of the Apollo 8 spacecraft safely orbit the moon.

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1970: The infamous Apollo 13 mission, whih launched on April 14, suffered an explosion 56 hours after lift-off. Despite mounting odds, the three astronauts landed safely back on Earth on April 17.

1970: In September, an unmanned Russian probe, Luna 16, returned to earth with a sample of lunar rock.

1971: US astronaut Alan Shepard of Apollo 14 became the first man to play golf on the moon, using a ball and golf club he smuggled inside his space suit.

1971: In June, a Russian crew who had spent a record 24 days in space were found dead in their capsule after landing in Kazakhstan.

1971: In November, the US Mariner 9 became the first spacecraft to orbit Mars.

1972: In December, Nasa launched its final mission to the Moon, Apollo 17.

1973: ESRO and Nasa agree to build Spacelab, a modular science package for use on Space Shuttle flights. Construction starts in 1974 and the first module is given to Nasa in exchange for flight opportunities for European astronauts. Spacelab was used on 25 shuttle flights between 1983 and 1998.

1974: Three US astronauts break records by spending 85 days in the American space station, Skylab, which orbits the Earth at a height of 270 miles. Skylab was abandoned and fell to Earth on 11 July 1979.

1975: The European Space Agency (ESA) was established as a collaboration between 18 European states. Headquartered in Paris, ESA now has a staff of nearly 2,000 and an budget of about €3.6 billion for 2009.

1976: In July, the Earth receives the first photographs of the surface of Mars thanks to the US Viking I spacecraft.

1979: The European Space Agency launches its first rocket, the Ariane 1, on Christmas Eve. It is followed in July 1980, by two larger rockets, the Ariane 2 and 3.

1980: The US Voyager 2 reached Saturn and beamed back the first images of the planet, which is 950 million miles from Earth.

1983: The US puts the first woman in space: Sally Ride, a 32-year-old former tennis champion.

1984: The UK’s Skynet 4A defence communications satellite is launched from a Nasa space shuttle. Its successor, Skynet 4B, was supposed to be accompanied by Nigel Woods, who would have become the UK’s first astronaut, but was cancelled because of the Challenger disaster, after which Nasa vowed not to take any more “passengers” aboard its shuttles.

1986: Seven astronauts die January 28, when the Challenger space shuttle broke up 73 seconds into its flight.

1986: A month later, the Russians launch the world’s biggest space station, Mir. This was almost continuously occupied until November 2000, including a 439-day stay by Russian astronaut Valeri Polyakov.

1987: The US launches the Discovery space shuttle with a five-man crew with the mission of launching a new communications satellite.

1989: In August, the US launches the unmanned Voyager 2 spacecraft, which sent back the first close-up images of Neptune and its satellite planets.

1990: The Discovery space shuttle launches on April 24 with the Hubble space telescope. The telescope is put into orbit 380 miles above the Earth, but when it sent its first images back in May, they were blurred. This prompts one of the most ambitious space missions ever, when astronauts are sent into space to repair it.

1990: In August, the Magellan spacecraft finishes a 15-month journey to Venus.

1991: Helen Sharman, from Sheffield, becomes the first Briton in space, on board the Soviet Soyuz TM-12 space capsule. She was selected from 13,000 applicants.

1995: The era of collaboration between Russia and the US begins in June, when two cosmonauts were delivered to the Mir space station by a US space shuttle.

1995: In April, the Global Positioning System (GPS) developed by the US Department of Defence goes live. It uses between 24 and 32 medium Earth orbit satellites and its official name is NAVSTAR GPS.

1995: The European Solar and Heliospheric Observatory mission is launched on December 12 with the Atlas 2-AS rocket. Its continuing mission is to “investigate the physical processes that form and heat the Sun's corona, maintain it and give rise to the expanding solar wind, and the interior structure of the Sun”

1997: In July, a rover called Sojourner is allowed to start its exploration of Mars. It covers 42,000 square metres of territory and is sent back 550 images of the Martian surface.

1998: Construction begins in space of the International Space Centre. It is due to be completed by 2011.

2001: A Californian man becomes the first space tourist. Dennis Tito, 60, had initially approached Nasa but, when he was refused a place on a space shuttle, opted to travel instead with a Russian crew. He spent eight days on board the International Space Station.

2003: In July, the US Columbia shuttle disintegrates as it re-enters the Earth’s atmosphere, killing all seven astronauts on board.

2003: China became the third country to send a man into space when it launched the Shenzhou V rocket from the Gobi desert. The astronaut, Yang Liwei, safely returns to Earth 21 hours later.

2003: On Christmas Day, the British-built Mars probe, Beagle 2, disappears. It was supposed to land on the planet’s surface at 0245 GMT but is never heard from again. Just days later, Nasa landed the Spirit rover on Mars and it sent back images of the planet’s surface.

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2005: The European Space Agency’s Huygens probe landed on Saturn’s moon, Titan, on 14 January. It continues to send data for 90 minutes.

2007: The European Union approves financing for the launch of 30 satellites to form Galileo, its own version of GPS. This is projected to be fully operational by 2013.

2008: ESA's Columbus laboratory is launched on Space Shuttle Atlantis to the International Space Station (ISS).

2009: The Herschel space observatory and the probe Planck launched. Planck is Europe's first mission to study the relic radiation from the Big Bang. Also this year, ESA astronaut Frank De Winne became the first European commander of an ISS expedition. And ESA has selected new astronauts, for the first time since 1992: there are two Italian, one French, one Dane, one German and one Briton, Timothy Peake. The new recruits will join the European Astronaut Corps and start their training to prepare for future missions to the International Space Station, and beyond.